In Clark County, Florida, Tanjee opened her eyes and tried to process what she was looking at. Above her was something black and twisted and she could see the sky through it. She was lying curled up in an uncomfortable ball. For a moment, she considered that she might be dreaming. Shifting a little caused a bolt of pain to streak through her head and left side. As it started to subside, she mumbled, “Okay, definitely not dreaming,” She groaned. “And laying in something wet.”
Slowly, she began to recognize the mangled mess above her. It was part of her car. Framing a far-away tableau of mid-morning sky was an asymmetrical opening where the passenger side window used to be. She racked her brain for any recollection of an accident. Nothing. All of a sudden, a panicked thought formed in her mind. The wetness she felt under her might be blood. She gingerly reached under herself to investigate. Water. She smelled it to make sure. Stagnant ditch water.
She felt the place where her head hurt the worst. There was a good-sized lump, but, again, no blood. Momentary relief was chased away by a couple of terrifying thoughts that came like a one–two punch: she could not get out of this car and she was not going to be rescued by chance. She knew she couldn’t get out of the car for two reasons. She was hurt and nothing is easy when you’re a big girl. Tanjee had always had what her grandmother called an Athabascan figure. Her short, round body was good for survival in the Arctic but everywhere else it made things difficult. She would not be able to pull herself out of that window opening.
She also feared she wouldn’t be rescued by a chance encounter with a random motorist because she was not hearing any vehicle noises. She had obviously run off the desolate road last night and was now injured and alone.
Tanjee was scared. She was not equipped to deal with this. She had never been interested in roughing it or survival-type scenarios. She was not the hardy, “forge into the wilderness” type. She should have been. Her ancestors should have bequeathed to her some desire to strike out into the unknown with only a club and a sharp stick. She had heard those kinds of stories all her life. And she knew that the people who told those stories, the people who understood and could do such feats, would always take care of her. But now, there was no one else: no Grandmother, no Daddy, no Chief Billy, to take responsibility for her survival. It was up to her.
She didn’t even know where to start. She worried that she might injure herself further if she moved around too much. What was the alternative? Lay here until she was dehydrated and too weak to move? No, she definitely had to get herself out of this car. Where was her phone? In her dazed state she had overlooked the most obvious way that she could remedy her troubles. She could call for help. If she could find her phone. When she pushed herself up to look around, the world and everything in it started to spin. Another stab of pain went through her head. She eased herself down with a defeated sigh. A mixture of fear and anger overwhelmed her and she began to cry. Into her head popped Grandmother’s voice. “Hey, trahtrayll tsul, you stop that now.”
Tanjee cried even harder. That is exactly what Grandmother would have done—called her a crybaby. There was no crying around Grandmother. If she were in this predicament, she would not have wasted time crying. Grandmother was strong. She never complained about anything. Tanjee hiccupped. What kind of crap was that? Grandmother complained about a million things—just not the typical things. She never complained about the bitter weather or their ramshackle house or how poor they were. But she complained plenty about other stuff. The village council, for one. Daily. Grandmother would go on hour-long harangues about how the elders were always favoring the young, attractive, unwed mothers in their decisions about how to allocate tribal monies.
“Do they give one thought to the old, fat widows who have empty-gut grandchildren dropped like a sack at their unpainted doors? No, they do not. Do they ever think about those poor oonjit fishing around in their faded pocketbooks for a dollar? No, they do not. Those poor, old, fat widows trying to feed their kids’ kids. It’s a shame on our people.”
Of course, Grandmother was the only old, fat widow caring for grandchildren in the village, but she never mentioned herself. These were phantom, old fat widows, with their phantom grandchildren.
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Three thousand miles away, Mark stopped spinning his pen on his desk and looked the yammering woman directly in the face. He was desperately trying to remember her name. He hoped she couldn’t tell from his expression that he was several paragraphs behind. He was supposed to be following along in the colorful, informative brochure she had given him. She was attractive and sufficiently animated in her delivery, but he just could not focus on what she was saying. He was still completely distracted by the nagging feeling that Blaine was in danger.
As soon as Ms. Blah Blah left, Mark picked up the phone and called Blaine. Voicemail. He started randomly pressing buttons. After 12 or 15 beeps, he laughed a fake laugh, a little too heartily, and started talking, loudly, “Hey, Blaine, you’re the Mensa candidate, figure out that text message. Ha! Seriously, Bradda, you’ve been on my mind for hours. I’m going off-grid at one and I was hoping to talk to you before that. Call me back. Hasta.” As he put the phone down, Mark muttered to himself, “Voicemail. Sheesh. I'm an idiot.”
He had an hour’s drive to his one o’clock appointment, so he jumped up and hurried out of the office. Halfway to the golf course he reached for his phone and realized he had left it on his desk. There was no way he could go back to the church to get it; he was meeting his wealthiest church member. “I’m not making him wait,” Mark thought. He would just deal with that uneasy feeling he got whenever he was without his phone. It was his connection to everything and everyone. “Crap,” Mark muttered.
“Crap!” Blaine yelled as he groped for his phone. It had fallen into the floorboard. He had missed a call a few minutes ago and had been trying to get hold of it and drive at the same time. That missed call better be Tanjee, he thought. Saying she was all right, and sorry that she had left without saying goodbye, but she just couldn’t take the Cavalcade of Clyettville Coots any longer, so she was driving back to Springfield and he was on his own. Or something like that. Yeah, she better apologize. He lunged one more time and knocked the phone further out of his reach. He growled through clenched teeth. He jerked the car from the road and slammed it into park.
“Come here, you little bugger,” Blaine groaned out the words as he stretched his full body length across the front of the car and into the floorboard. He retrieved the phone. Mark’s name was on the display.
Blaine had left the funeral home feeling disoriented. Staring at Mark’s name on his caller ID only added to his confusion. Mark? Had someone called Mark? Did he know about Big Carl? Over the course of the last couple of days Blaine had picked up the phone to call Mark but had changed his mind each time. He just did not know how to break it to him that Big Carl was dead.
Blaine was having trouble thinking straight. Funeral plans, autopsy reports, Mark, Wahneta, the nightmares, and in the middle of it all worrying about Tanjee kept resurfacing. He felt guilty that he couldn’t tell her the truth, but how could he? There were so many unanswered questions. If he just had that tape. He was convinced that all the answers were on that tape. A while back, it had dawned on him that the origins of his theory had come from Big Carl himself. Blaine had tried to call him about it numerous times. After several days of no answers and no return phone calls, Blaine threw some clothes into a bag and left for Florida. On the drive down he sent Tanjee frequent text messages. She conveniently failed to inform him that, after the first one, she decided to follow him to Florida. He felt guilty about that, too.
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